Background
John Sibley was descended from John Sibley who came from England in 1629 and settled at Salem, Massachussets. He was born at Sutton, Massachussets, the son of Timothy and Anne (Waite) Sibley.
Agent physician planter politician
John Sibley was descended from John Sibley who came from England in 1629 and settled at Salem, Massachussets. He was born at Sutton, Massachussets, the son of Timothy and Anne (Waite) Sibley.
He studied medicine with Dr. John Wilson of Hopkinton, served in the Revolution with the Continental troops as surgeon's mate, and settled for practice at Great Barrington.
On his arrival in New Orleans, Sibley presented letters of introduction to prominent officials, and soon became a familiar visitor to the homes of some of the élite of the colony. At Natchez, where he visited many times, he met W. C. C. Claiborne, later governor of Orleans Territory, who was impressed with Sibley's knowledge of Louisiana and of the Indian tribes and recommended to President Jefferson that he be sent into the colony to gather information. Leaving Natchez by boat and proceeding up Red River, he arrived at Natchitoches in March 1803.
Upon the arrival of the United States troops after the transfer of that post from the Spanish, he was appointed contract surgeon to the army. In 1805 he was appointed Indian agent for Orleans Territory and subsequently visited most of the tribes within the area now covered by the state of Louisiana. Reporting on their condition to both Claiborne and Jefferson, he began the gathering of a vocabulary of the tribes within the territory. Whether this was ever completed is not known, but a considerable fragment of the Caddo vocabulary is printed in the American Naturalist for December 1879.
Summarily removed from the office of Indian agent late in 1814 for political reasons, he entered politics himself, becoming parish judge and serving in the legislature of the state for many years. His military training served him in good stead, for he soon became colonel of militia and joined Col. James Long's raid on the province of Texas in 1819.
After the capture of Nacagdoches, he was made a member of the supreme council governing the latter post. Returning to Natchitoches, he retired to his plantation at Grande Ecore, and engaged in the manufacture of salt at Postlewaite's salt works, a few miles away. At his death he left many descendants.
In 1780 he married Elizabeth Hopkins, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Hopkins.
After her death in 1790 at Fayetteville, North Carolina, to which place he had moved with his family and where he had established the Fayetteville Gazette, he married on November 10, 1791, Mrs. Mary White Winslow. In September 1802 he moved to Louisiana, leaving his family in North Carolina but keeping up a correspondence with them until the death of his wife in 1811. Two years later he married as his third wife Eudalie Malique, a resident of Louisiana.